Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover

The cover of a comic book is the first thing you see. It’s pretty much advertising common sense to then make this cover as appealing to you so you part with your cash. This means all kinds of shock tactics are used for you to go “Oh, why is A and B teamed or oh no is C going to die?”

Well I’m here to make sure you effectively understand the secret code used on covers to make sure your cash is parted properly.

1. The central character is 95% likely not going to die – If the lead character of the comic is say, Spider-man, and on the cover he has gone limp in the grips of say, the Green Goblin, then Spider-man is likely going to be around till next issue.

Just remember plot armour is a powerful thing.

2. Characters with a strict moral codes will not let it drop for one issue – If you ever see an issue of Batman with the title character posing with a gun, don’t worry, Batman won’t be returning to his original crime fighting methods (yes Batman did use to kill). It’s probably being used to imply see kind of test of the characters inner strength.

3. Guest characters tend to have a cameo length the size of a of modern generation story campaign (very brief and over exaggerated in length) – Say you walk past an issue of The Flash and you see that Robin is on the front cover. Don’t expect an intense buddy story to pop out, because it’ more then likely Robin will be used a plot device to help progress story and nothing more.

4. The presented story has tendency of getting revolved very quickly – If an issue of Green Lantern implies that Green Lantern has been captured by Cyborg Superman you expect a detailed of epic of his escape. Usually this a story carried on from the previous issue and this stage of the ongoing story will be quickly resolved and the plot will mostly concern itself with another big part of the story.

Just think about these four rules and it should help you make some sensible comic purchasing decisions.